Piazza San Marco, Looking toward San Geminiano

Look to the far end of the square. The church with the white facade closing Piazza San Marco between the two long arcaded buildings is San Geminiano, rebuilt by the architect Jacopo Sansovino in the 16th century. Nobody can see it there today. In 1807, under Napoleon's rule, it was pulled down to make way for a new palace wing, so this view, painted between about 1735 and 1740, records a square that no longer exists in this shape. It is not a straight record, all the same. The Venetian critic Anton Maria Zanetti warned in 1771 that Canaletto's pictures look true only to those without the judgement to see otherwise. The museum reads the scene as a stage set, with the Clock Tower on the right and the bell tower and its little loggia on the left as the wings, and a figure peering out from that loggia.